Pill Pod 206 - Trump Declares War on Education

Yea we missed a lot of news, but we wanted to cover the Trump regime's war on higher education. As a group with a lot of university affiliations, we hate universities too, but here we try to diagnose the reasons for the recent clashes.

Get all of the content at https://www.patreon.com/plasticpills

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Thank You're far too kind checking each check our faces
are bad.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
I love to see you guys.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
By the way, I bring the Latin love to the
to the podcast. I always say how much I love
you guys, how much I miss you, how much I
like you. You see, that's the Latin language speaking through me me.

Speaker 4 (00:25):
I miss you every day.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
You see.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
That's your Chilenyan side being actually transparent with our friendship.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
That's nice.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
And then I go, guy, stop being awkward. I don't
even want to know that you have feelings, let alone
what they are.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
His Anglo Saxon awkwardness coming in.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Excuse me. I am neither Anglo nor Saxon. Even worse,
I am Germanic.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
Germanic.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
He's an orientalist from now Oh yeah, he's purely a
boot It's just one of those Odin worshippers.

Speaker 4 (00:55):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, I would love to tell you about Fabava, but
we're gonna pay it because we missed a lot of news,
and this is a lot. Most of the news is
just like funny, we got we got the tariffs and
the trade wars, Trump crashing the market like the worst.
Everyone knows this already, but it's just too fun it's

(01:17):
the it's the first time that like one person has
caused the crash of a market instead of like COVID
or nine to eleven.

Speaker 4 (01:24):
And I kind of find what we're going to talk
about today funny too. I don't know if you're very
implying that it's not funny. I think it's very funny.

Speaker 5 (01:30):
I heard it was the biggest market downturn of the
doubts the twenties.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep.

Speaker 5 (01:37):
Which is a typical I always feel it feel like
it's a typical thing to hear when I go on
news binges.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
Great big question, it's the biggest, No, not since it's
a great depression.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
The biggest COVID, I thought.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
Oh, COVID, Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
No, I think it's already larger than that.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
They said, like all time it was the big doesn't matter,
We're gonna move on.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
It's agree.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
The only thing that's potentially about this, like the market crashes,
which is you know, it just does that. That's a thing.
Line goes up, line goes down. But the the the
unthinkably damaging thing that has happened there is the treasury drop.
Because usually when the market drops, then treasury securities go up,

(02:19):
and this time they didn't go up. I haven't. I
haven't checked what they are at this week, but that
could be. That's like that changes the future, that changes
the hegemony of the American dollar potentially.

Speaker 5 (02:31):
But hooray I mean this and this also may explain
Trump's push into crypto and to deregulate crypto just just
as hedging in case everyone flees the dollar as the
reserve currency into These things.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
Are all so boring compared to what we're actually going.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
To talk about. Hey, crashing the market is base. If
Bernie Sanders had one, he would have to do all
the same stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
Or yeah, aren't we all still waiting for the big one?

Speaker 4 (02:57):
Like it?

Speaker 5 (02:58):
You know there's ups and downs two thousand and eight COVID.
When's the big one coming that everything goes?

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I think, comrade Trump, it's going to push us into
the future unwillingly.

Speaker 5 (03:09):
That's the portal to the future. Is the is the
downward the crash?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah? Right, we also never talked about, like Canada politics,
massive shift. It's completely just based on.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
The the rise of the car.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
But let's not let's not go to into detail. But
the Conservatives we're going to have a majority government and
now they're not. Now the Liberals are are they set
for majority or still minority government?

Speaker 4 (03:39):
Majority?

Speaker 5 (03:40):
I heard they were up, but I don't know by home.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
That is just the most insane one eighty And it's
just because we vote with our feelings, and our feelings
are we don't like are Alberton, Ron de Santis nerds?

Speaker 3 (03:51):
So where's Canada again?

Speaker 4 (03:54):
That's yeah, that's such a it's right above the United States. Yeah,
just as a geography lesson, we share a border with them.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
It's kind of big. It's hard to miss.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, people are mostly concentrated on very very small places.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
But you saw how Trump thought when he was talking
about Canada becoming the fifty first state. He looked at
He's like, look at it. It'd be a beautiful big
thing if it became a that's the reason you know
what you want. But also, like a note on Karney,
Mark Karney, the very very likely new prime minister. Totally incidentally,
someone like randomly bought me this book like years ago,
which is right here. It's his It's Mark Karney's actual book,

(04:28):
and I thought it'd be quite funny. Maybe we could
cover it on the podcast. Maybe there's something funny in
here that we could read all values. It's like his philosophy.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
I love both value and values. These are important terms
to me.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, cool, cool terms.

Speaker 5 (04:41):
Yeah, Yeah, that's intriguing. What's why is the s anyway?

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Well, you got marks for value and Niatzure for values.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
And these guys doing both.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
Yeah, I bet.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
There's a ton of marks in that book.

Speaker 4 (04:53):
I'll bet you that was just a I'll bet you
that was the publisher, like his editor being like, we
need him a clever title, Pier, let's just do with.

Speaker 5 (05:00):
Let's put this s under rature exactly.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Okay, So what we're covering today is not all the
stuff that we just talked about. Maybe we will know
at some point, but we want to talk about Trump
declaring war on universities because most of us have spent
I think, are all of us still in a university
close enough? Ifiliating you're taking a degree right now? Right? Yeah, anyway,

(05:27):
we've spent a combined like fifty years in a university.

Speaker 4 (05:32):
I'm still very affiliated with universities for sure.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, and we know what's wrong with them, having spent
so much time there. And we're going to decide whether
Trump knows what's wrong with them? If they are, they're
a sickness I think was what he said on Truth
Social And I love when people say things like sickness
because then you get all the religious metaphors in there.
And there's no doubt that universities do some annoying shit.

(06:01):
There's no doubt that university heats are corrupt. So I'm
not crying over here. Eric at one point on this
podcast did a deep dive into the corruption of his
university where the board had all these ties to a
nonprofit and then all the money was like circled through
there for building contracts on campus, building completely unnecessary buildings

(06:24):
on campus, just because the construction or the builder is
like the brother of on the board. So this stuff
happens all the time at universities. I'm sure they're basically corporations,
no doubt, and academics, with their pursuit of wisdom and
free inquiry, that could happen at a university, but it's

(06:47):
not guaranteed. But Trump hates all the university and we
agree generally speaking as academic side, that we hate university administrations.
The academic hates them.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Yeah, I kind of hate both sides of this. Debate,
So it's going to be pretty cool. I agree.

Speaker 4 (07:07):
I kind of hate both sides of this to too.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
What are what are both the sides?

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Trump and the universities?

Speaker 4 (07:13):
Trump and the university?

Speaker 5 (07:14):
Oh oh, in terms of that, yeah, Trump versus Trump
versus higher education and the universities that he chose as well.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, yeah, he was selective.

Speaker 4 (07:24):
Yeah yeah, maybe this is maybe gonna be a controversial
thing to put on the table. But like there were
a couple of Trump's demands that I was kind of like, yeah,
it's a good idea. Maybe which ones like one or two,
Like I would say.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Should be like prefaced by setting people on the mood
and like telling a little bit of the behind story.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
And we read some New York Times articles here for this,
maybe we should just give them a quick run.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
I randomly choose Eric to do that, to give the
rundown of what's random selections?

Speaker 4 (07:50):
Random selection deliberately chosen by Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Totally random.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
It was determined by previously existing material conditions.

Speaker 5 (07:58):
So was it a April eleventh?

Speaker 4 (08:02):
Right?

Speaker 5 (08:02):
These demands were sent to Harvard, which which included ending
DEI and critical race theory, kinds of connected programs and
things that are funded overall to well reduce the autonomy
of the university governance, basically by instituting merit based hiring

(08:27):
practices instead of instead of I guess would you call
them like a dei quota or affirmative action type stuff. Yeah,
targeting international students. We've been hearing a lot about that
and the deportations and referring to protests as riots.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
And I just quickly added that the stick he's using though,
is like federal funding, right, so he's going to cut
I was going to get I was.

Speaker 5 (08:51):
Going to get to that. One broad thing he's done
in all of his post Project twenty twenty five strategies,
including this one, is to weaponize federal funding. And those
are the basic that's basically he sent these demands by mistakes,
some say to Harvard, and I mean, I guess that's

(09:12):
similar demands that were sent to Columbia and similar demands
he's putting on. But Harvard is also fighting back and
suing Trump, being like, we're a private institution, First Amendment,
freedom of speech, blah blah blah. Government overreached. So those
are the two sides Trump's demands and Harvard like retaliatory lawsuit.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
And can I just just for context, I think this
is this is is an ongoing fight between the Republicans
and the universities versus all these critical race theories and
saying that universities are supposedly Marxist hellholes that are forming
revolutionaries and whatnot. But I think what I think it
was the event that really triggered this direct attack against

(09:56):
educational institutions. What was the predominance of protest in favor
of the Palestinian people and against the genocide that is
going on in Israel. I think that was the main trigger,
and that detonated into like a completely a defeat in
the propaganda war because I think now the majority of
millennials and centennials in the US are pro Palestinia and

(10:17):
against Israel. And I think that is a little bit
of context and backdrop to justify why Trump is attacking
the universities.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
On that point. Like in our group chat, Pills assigned
a little bit of homework and you know, I want
to be the good boy who you know, the good
student who did his homework. And one of them was
was he said, you know, focus on like the narratives.
I guess I don't know. I mean I'm just kind
of kidding here. So I was just trying to think
to myself. I was like, what are the two narratives?

(10:44):
Maybe this isn't even what Pills meant by narratives, but
I was thinking to myself and kind of to Diego's point,
I see, like the Trump side narrative is like universities
are like bastions of left wing indoctrination, hostile to white
and Jewish students, and on a accountable to like the
broader public and its public responsibility. And I would say
that he's trying to and he's framing himself and like

(11:07):
people like Christopher Ruffo and all these people as restoring
balance and freedom right, especially for conservative speech. And then
I would say that the university's narrative, like Harvard's narrative,
is institution's value autonomy, academic freedom, non partisan inquiry, and
this crackdown is an authoritarian overreach that's like trying to

(11:28):
use weaponizing research funding. And you know, they have this
idealized vision of the university as like stewards of an
independent inquiry. You know, they advanced knowledge through academic freedom
and that requires insulation, and they see this as like
an infringement on that those are kind of like the
way that I see the two narratives. I don't know
if that's what you're looking for, pills, but that's that's

(11:49):
what I came up with.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, I was looking for the mythology. Part of the
mythology here doesn't it doesn't exactly make sense. I'm not
really sure why Trump would be or the closest people
to Trump are concerned about anti Semitism.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
Well, this is what this is why to me, it's
clear and like not to sound conspiratorial, and it's just
so easy when this topic comes up to sound like,
you know, like someone who's into Jewish conspiracy Jewish conspiracy theories.
But it's just simply true that like the Jews, like
the Israel Lobby does have a lot of influence in
like the Trump administration and both the Democratic and Republican parties,

(12:27):
And I just like know if it's just like it's
just almost certain that like in the wake of October seventh,
like there's many people in the administration who are like, look,
the universities are like contributing to this, you need to
do something about this, And they're kind of framing it
as like an attack on Jewish students and then this
is leading to these kinds of demands. So like it's
just you know, and they're they're and they're funding a

(12:48):
lot of election campaigns. And sorry if that makes me
sound like a fucking Israel conspiracy theorist, but like that
shit just seems true.

Speaker 5 (12:56):
I mean, since since the war between Hamas and la
could right, it's been anti semitism on campus charges all
in the media. Even in Canada. We experienced it, hear,
that's why we're talking about this. We have some experience
with it, and those those kinds of things. Anti semitism
on campus was like really you know, trumped up as

(13:19):
after the war started.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
So I don't who knows whether or not Trump himself
cares about anti Semitism. People around him might, people around
him might. But also there's so much in this of
like Rufo. We read Rufo a while ago, and he's
he's the big the CEI mind virus is taking over
these universities and we need to cleanse and purge them.

(13:44):
But I think it's one of the things is funny
because they the demands were to purge your departments that
are known for anti Semitism, including including like Middle Eastern studies,
South Asian Studies, I believe, and Harvard Divinity School. And
by the way, the Harvard Divinity School it's probably like

(14:08):
two or three hundred years old, I'm sure, and Protestant,
so I'm sure they did the oldest they did some
anti Semitism, there's no doubt about that.

Speaker 5 (14:17):
It was an endowment from the late seventeen hundreds by
some British trader or something. It's a permanent endowment, so
they can only ever use that endowment money to re
up that divinity professor position. So that's why it is
still there because like permanent endowments, you just have to
keep using them for their original purpose, even if it's

(14:39):
two hundred years old.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
But let's keep going. Let's keep going into this a
little bit because there's, first of all, this is the
administration and the university lawyers that are dealing with Trump.
These are not academics, so do they care about academic freedom.
They kind of have to for like brand purposes. But
if we compare now Columbia University to Harvard Columbia University

(15:03):
storied school, a lot of the the greats went there
or went through there. It's reputable, and Trump says, you
guys have to stop funding the South Asian Studies Department
and surveil your students better because anti Semitism, and Columbia,
this prestigious center of learning, just goes, yes, sir, you mean,

(15:25):
we'll get right on that. And now now this like
not to be too self righteous here, because this is
probably the right move. You just say to Trump, yes,
we're going to get our best people on it, sir,
and then you don't really have to do anything because
he just wants the He wants the nod. And then
you get your billions of dollars of funding continue and
the academics who are who are getting funded continue to

(15:48):
get funding. No one lose their jobs. But you look
like a dog for capitulating. And I think Harvard, whether
or not they I mean they certainly could follow follow suit,
but I think this would be this is like so
damaging to your reputation as an independent center of learning.

(16:09):
And then just to capitulate to a complete clown who actually,
well Trump, Trump did have a university, so maybe he uh,
maybe he actually does know what he's on about here.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
When I was doing my homework on this, I wanted
to do Marx, Lacan and the Lose on like as
a framework to address this topic, But I think, like
the Lose, we can probably leave if we have time,
because it's the least interesting.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Wait what you we think you have time for Marx
and Lacan?

Speaker 5 (16:38):
Yeah, well only have time for too.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
I did. I did in my homework.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
So, like the quick question that I found very interesting
when when applying the Marxist critique of even the relationship
between ideology, what's the role of academia in perpetuating the
existing ideology and Trump's movement is very interesting because now
the way I see it is that Okay, wait, so
Harvard as a university within capitalism, it's another company. It

(17:05):
behaves as another company. I think even one of you
guys said in the chat that the if Kara traded
in Wall Street, it would be trading like between the top.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Five hundred companies.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Is like full of money, full of endorsements, is washing
money everywhere, evading taxes.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
So it's a big company.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
So we know it is actually a company, but it's
supposed to be working as a as a university, as
an academic institution. But regardless, like if we take the Marxist
analysis the role of institutions is to perpetuate the existing ideology.
So what Trump is doing is weird to me because
in a way, it's like, okay, if capitalism has this
intrinsic characteristic of being ever expanding like this in a

(17:46):
globalist neoliberal trend, of tearing down whatever resistances have, it
melts everything into solid into thin air. So capital has
this ever expanding growth strategy. It's more represented in Harvard
than in Trump. And according to me, what Trump is doing,
it's more like, I don't know if he's been anti

(18:06):
capitalist by punishing the freedom of an institution that is
perpetuating the ideology the religion of capital, because let's be honest,
like what Harvard does is like the supreme Church of capital,
even even if in the humanities or whatever they do
that is supposed to be left leaning, everything is like
the Church of Capital in Harvard. So Trump, by censoring them,

(18:28):
it's it's a weird move. So my my conclusion, and
I wanted to hear from you guys, is that, Okay,
So what is Trump doing in this in the relationship
between universities perpetuating the currently existing ideology?

Speaker 4 (18:41):
Well, I have that's interesting. That's that's I feel like
that's almost that's so much deeper than I was going
to go, like, like I think in a way like
to me, I guess, okay, Like so my first reaction
to that is I feel like that analysis is sort
of premised on the idea that everyone knows the material
conditions are what matter, and I don't think that's true.
I think many, many people, especially in this American political moment,

(19:05):
actually think that the culture war is what matters. More So,
you and I could agree that they're wrong about that,
but it's also just true that that's what they believe.
So but they think that they think the online.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
It doesn't matter what they believe.

Speaker 4 (19:19):
But their behavior is still gonna like I think, so
maybe that's maybe we do disagree with them because I
think like their behavior is going to be Like like
Christopher Ruffo, I don't think that like his behavior is
necessarily like it's going to be mediated by material conditions,
but he really thinks that like, you know, stopping DEI
and wokeness like matters the most, right, Like that's what

(19:40):
he thinks matters the most. And I and I think
like there's also some short term thinking going on here
where like right now Trump and like the conservatives see, oh,
like we won this last election because we had advertisements
that said, you know, she's for they them, Trump's for
you and me. Right that worked, Like, let's keep attacking

(20:03):
this because that's what's gonna win us the next election
if we can put all this wokeness stuff on the defense. So, like,
I don't think that they're thinking that long term, that
big picture. They're just like people don't like wokeness. Attacking
wokeness won us the election. Universities are seen as part
of this elite woke discourse. Let's attack the university. That's
gonna win us brownie points. Like, I think it's as

(20:23):
simple as that.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, But but I also think it connects back to
the way Peels was talking about religion last episode in
a way that in a way, now religion as ideology,
it's working as a stabilizing agent, and you know, and
this this recoil to previous belief systems, it's a it's
an intention for for stability.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
That that was my reading.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
I think you're onto something, but you're you're being a
little too simplistic with it, Like who's capital and who's
anti capital? I think this is more like capital versus capital.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
It's a yeah, I too think it's capital verse.

Speaker 5 (21:00):
I was gonna say that, yeah, And I think a
helpful concept would be like hegemony.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Right, it's too factions one. I don't know if you
call it like you could call it something like well,
you could call it something like new money versus old money.
But like, because he's got he's got the tech people,
he's got the new conservatives, they're trying to they're trying
to get their piece of the pie. And Harvard and
Columbia kind of represent like democrat, you know, old money

(21:30):
even even like Bush is.

Speaker 5 (21:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I looked at it as Pills did,
and and I think I agree with Diego. But but yeah,
you know that they're competing models of capitalism that you
can sort of loosely group under, like the right wing
and the left wing. And and Trump's Trump's right wing

(21:54):
version is different than the previous ones, right like the
neo conservative kinds of different kinds of traditional So he's
fighting against like a kind of liberal creep, as they
sometimes call it, and he's fighting against like a different
conservative model that's been much closer to the interventionist kind

(22:16):
of George Bush style conservatism, which Trump wants to reverse,
which is why all the warhawks are going over to
the Democrats. And this attack on the universities, I think
it serves I think it serves various purposes. You know,
I don't think we can just look at it even
you know, what does Trump care about? Does he care

(22:37):
about the who cares what he cares about? Because, like
Diego said, his beliefs don't matter, right, his behavior is
determined within the horizon of capitalism, and he is looking
at the ideological front. Harvard doesn't produce anything, it changed,
it doesn't. It's not a productive entity. But it is

(22:59):
an ideological state apparatus. I guess you could call it
and remember it's a private institution, but Alficer said that
doesn't matter if it's a private institution or a public institution.
It's still an ISA, right, So he's just taking it
to the hegemony side, right. And so you know the
anti Semitism stuff, right, that serves other purposes that are

(23:21):
closely allied with Netanyahu. You know, the NDI, the attacks
on LGBT and transgender women in university sports, and like
the motherhood stuff. That's another block of the ideology there right,
And that's you can see that in the university attacks,
you know, limiting immigration, targeting immigrants, targeting radical ideologies, that's

(23:41):
another block, another front of his attack.

Speaker 4 (23:45):
Right.

Speaker 5 (23:45):
These are all just whether or not he believes in
any of these things or cares about any of these things. There,
they're justifications or framings, right, And that's what we were
looking at with the news too. Are there counter framings
going on here in the New York Times? Not really,
They just refer to it as a culture wars. We're
back in that old myth of succession. But and then

(24:06):
obviously Fox and the the media that's more likely to
be Trump friendly, is saying, you know, these demands, Harvard
is rejecting very reasonable demands.

Speaker 4 (24:18):
But isn't it Isn't it also notable that like none
of the STEM stuff is being attacked.

Speaker 5 (24:24):
Oh yeah, it's ironices bros.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
All the tech bros are like are obviously behind Trump,
and they're like the STEM work is important, like all
everything that's in STEM is is.

Speaker 5 (24:32):
But they're not behind Trump because of the tariffs now, right,
and the timing is super important. Columbia, My theory is
that Columbia must have collapsed when things looked very different. Harvard, yes,
is a much richer institution, but they also decided to
push back at a later date when you know, it's
so obvious now that the tech bros, at least as

(24:55):
far as Elon Musk represents them, are on their way
out of the center of influence because Tesla is fucked
and the doge is insane and everyone knows it now,
and Musk is is making his graceful entrance exit with
trying to save as much face as possible.

Speaker 4 (25:12):
I was I was going to say also, I was
going to say also that the thing about the budget
and the endowment, like because because the pills earlier, you
asked like Columbia wasn't like, didn't resist. Columbia's endowment is
a measly fourteen point eight billion with an important detail,
thirty six thousand students total. Okay, and Harvard uh, and

(25:32):
Harvard is there there. Endowment is fifty one billion for
twenty thousand students.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
Wow, for half.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
Yeah, So it's so insane.

Speaker 5 (25:42):
Harvard is wealthier than the wealthiest four Americans. It's it's
very it's the world's wealthiest. Like public university, I believe,
not a public university, private university.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
I don't want I don't want to get too into this,
but you can't like directly pull from your endowment to
fund research projects like that. So I know it's like, oh,
they have all this money, but their money is like
assigned to other stuff. And then but they need the
budgets like that if you get.

Speaker 5 (26:09):
It, like the Divinity chair we mentioned, but they do.
That's a permanent endowment. They can only ever use the
money to re up that channel.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
But they do also have like a hedge fund like
that makes them more money.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
No doubt.

Speaker 5 (26:21):
Well, yeah, that's they're worth like nine hundred billion I
think total assets. The the endowment is just the whatever
fifty billion endowment. That's what they have. And it's a
combination of permanent endowments, so strings always attached, temporary endowments,
strings attached for a while. Then they can use it
for whatever they want. And then there's just endowment endowments.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Right.

Speaker 5 (26:44):
They just come through the foundation wing, that private foundation
wing that universities love to have, and they can. The
board then decides how that money and it's and its
proceeds are used.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
I absolutely love my position in this podcast that the
guy that that like throws well theory out there, and
then you guys with a proper education like ground me
and find the nuances in what I said. I absolutely
adore it, but I want to just taking the advantage
of my ability to stretch. I just want to say this,
It's almost as if there's a self aware mechanism within

(27:16):
the logic of capital that knows that the excess in
the stretchability of liberalism, the metaphysics of liberalism, what was
impeding the growth of capital. You know, it's as if that, okay,
so capital will go as a flow of water like whatever.
There's lease resistance and more ability for self reproduction like

(27:38):
this self awareness of lise resistances and ability to replicate itself,
and wokeness was now becoming a cost for capital, was
becoming a.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Burden for capital.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
It's as if this is like capital itself turning itself
down a little bit so it can continue to exist
because that path was already becoming a jopar d for capital.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Global Can you explain how wokeness stops capital?

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, in the sense in the sense that it became
a for example, a problem for self replication. It didn't
like in the nineties and in the early two thousands.
Everything that was connected to this sense of humanities and
helping others was explain that the sense that you when
you buy a coffee in Starbucks, you're already paying for
the guilt, you know, So like wokeness, green washing, pink washing,

(28:29):
purple washing, was already assuming the guilt in consumption and
charging it to you. And that model worked for like
a decade or two. But now it seems like the
guilt is no longer enough to justify the cycle and
the expansion of consumption.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
I guess I kind of see it differently. I don't.
I don't really think that wokeness has anything to do
with with capital's own movement. It has to do with
the people who are who are in power in the structure.
They need to feel that they're doing good things. Well
they're not, so.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
It actually it actually helps capital, I would say often.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
But but then you get the Trump faction. The Trump
is the reaction the people that, like every single Trump
supporter already hates Harvard, so they're gonna they're gonna be
appeased by this. They are left out of success abundance.
They've been left out for a long time.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
And then here's a gain contradictory.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
This is what is really contradictory because ninety seven percent
of the like of the wealth of the country, it's
in half of the billionaires in the in the in
the capitalist class in the US. And these are the
people that are going to Harbor in Colombia, you know,
like this this is what is really weird. Like the
working class of course they hate Harvard. They will never
go there, like they couldn't care less about it. But

(29:47):
the issue is that it's it's like when you say
there's two wings of capital competing against itself, Like I
don't see it, Like the capitalist class is very small,
Like there's a bunch of people with know class consciousness,
which is different, but the capital is class is actually
very very small.

Speaker 4 (30:01):
But that but doesn't that tell you, like I.

Speaker 5 (30:03):
Mean, there's two branches of capitalists ideology, maybe not not
individ capital numbers of a class.

Speaker 4 (30:12):
The more I think about it, the more I'm starting
to feel persuaded that like within kind of capitalist in incentives,
there's like disagreement about like how are like to put
it really simply, like how are we going to be rich?
Are we going to be rich in like this globally
interconnected world, or are we going to be rich in
like our in the United States as American where we

(30:34):
get to be like church going people or something like that.
I don't know, maybe that doesn't.

Speaker 5 (30:40):
Make Sense's the protectionist.

Speaker 4 (30:42):
Yeah, the protectionist exactly. It's like, are we going to
be rich like alone over here? Are we going to
be rich? And like that does seem like there's maybe
a disagreement in within capital among capitalists.

Speaker 5 (30:50):
Which is the other side of the coin of the
anti interventionist thing is protectionism. That's the other side of
the coin and universe these be like doing those attacks
on the international students serves a couple different purposes again, right,
because he can say all those they are radicals, we

(31:11):
need to ideologically vet them to make sure that they
are comply with American values. That's part of his demands
and sort of the broader Project twenty twenty five vision
of all American institutions, not just the Department of Education,
but you know all of them, you know, Trump friendly
people with the coud American values, right, And that's that's

(31:31):
so this like sort of conformity and ideological vetting type
of thing he wants to put in there. But yeah,
that's another side of that coin, right, Like universities are
not for educating people's kids and then sending back to
their country and we lose their intellectual capital. Right, it's
for it's for educating Americans right here in America kind

(31:54):
of thing. Right. I think that fits. That's the vision.
There's at least that's that's the framing of it, right.
You can you can frame it in different ways, and
and I think it's connected to those issues anyway. That's
why I say this is like a you got to
look at the menu and be like, Okay, there's all
these things we want to do. What's next? Okay, something

(32:16):
that the Department of Education. Okay, but all right, let's
hit the anti semitism button, the LGBTQ thing. How do
we get people worked up about that. I'll run something
on the transgender women in sports that'll get people upset
and then we can do this. Okay, what's next? Uh?
Traditional family values? All BLM. Let's show kids a video

(32:36):
about how BLM is like a criminal organization that promotes
anti police sentiment and in our like you know all
that it's just like a menu they just select, you know,
how it's the framing today, what what the researchers say,
These things resonate with the people we want to resonate with, Okay,
but like it has nothing. Yeah, that's that's how I'm

(32:57):
kind of imagining it in a weird metaphorical way, that
these things are going.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
The rich kids, the rich people's kids are still they're
going to Harvard, Yale, and Columbium, but these rules and
stipulations they don't target those people. They like, if we
have a university's it's like point oh five percent that
are doing cultural studies, gender studies, those those kinds of things,

(33:24):
they have to identify this as as being representative of
the university as a whole. So I find it. I
do find it interesting that the Lawyer's Administration Board, they
are saying to Trump, no, we're not going to do
this on behalf of those, on behalf of those you know,

(33:47):
point oh five percent of their their faculty or whatever
it is. So I don't know, it's almost like they
actually do believe in the university mission, or at least
they say they do, because this would be very damaging
to their brand if they were just to say yes
to to Trump's demands.

Speaker 4 (34:07):
Yeah, well, I was going to say.

Speaker 5 (34:08):
There's that word again. Believe what they believe in. It's
without the psychological tones. I would agree, because, like I said,
I think it's just that Harvard just refused when things
looked different. Columbia caved when things looked like they were
going in a different direction.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
And now I think you're being a little cynical to
just think that Harvard is a corporation that only cares
about making profit, because if they were, this would be fine.
They don't. They don't need these five people. They can
say yes, Well, I would.

Speaker 5 (34:42):
Look at the beliefs I guess according to ideologies like
we were talking about earlier, and like you know, what's
the hegemony that the university represents right now? And what
does Trump want it to be? And what are like
other maybe other models of what that like that, what
what kind of ideology do I want coming out of

(35:03):
the university system here? And like who's who's there and
might agree with me? And who's preventing me? Like who
might be out of line with my direction and vision
of things?

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Right?

Speaker 5 (35:16):
So that's why you know they're dragging the presidents of
universities in front of like who is that that other one?
That got canned, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
This was Clyde and Gay like plagiarized something.

Speaker 5 (35:29):
Like sending a message basically saying, you know, you can't
you know, do whatever you want. We can get to you, right,
we can. We can change your administration if we want to, right,
which is the message he wants to send, also to
the Federal Reserve. He wants to send it to every
major institution that like, you know, we control you. Right now,

(35:49):
it's just with withholding funds, but eventually it's going to
be more direct.

Speaker 3 (35:55):
Yeah, I think I think that's a cool part of
this story.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Like it it takes away the the clothing of universities
and just reveals them as they as what they are, mercenaries.
I think Colombia was the quicker mercenary and Harvard is
probably going to negotiate a little bit more. But in
the end they respond their mercenaries. They're up for sales.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
That's what I don't see it, Like Harvard's suing Trump
suing Trump. Yeah, a cynical company, well cynically as cynical
as I can be. Trump Trump's demands to Harvard don't
don't harm their bottom line, Like I don't. This is
what I'm still saying it doesn't harm the bottom line.
They could capitulate. But as cynical as I can be,

(36:39):
because you're you're saying, well, this is revealing what they are.
I'm saying people still act like they believe in something
like academic freedom because they said no too far. Now
the cynical, as cynical as I can be is to say, well,
this is a branding decision for them, because if they
were best for us. But I still, you know, I
have I have more faith that there's something more than

(37:00):
that that some people in the universities, even in the
administration that we all hate, some of them believe in
something like academic freedom, free and quiry.

Speaker 4 (37:10):
I agree, I totally agree. It's so uncommon for you
to be the optimist on the panel here kill he's
a b.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
I would not call this optimism. I would call this
like you're painting thousands of kids.

Speaker 4 (37:21):
It's not optimism, but it's but it's a certain kind
of it's a certain kind of centrism. Centrism, well, it's
a certain kind of resistance to like the most cynical take.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
I thought I thought people was going to be team
tanked top.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
But that's just because. But but you're totally right. I mean,
I entirely agree with you. I think like the cynical
take can only get you so far, and I just think,
like it's just true there are a lot of people
in the university who believe in these things. I think,
I think that's true. I totally think that's true. And
I think that I agree. The most cynical take, I
think you had you hit the nail on the head
is like to look at this the most cynically. It's

(37:53):
like it's bad for the Harvard brand if they capitulate
like so, that's like a self interested decision. It's like
their brand would look bad if they just capitulate to
like someone who's seen as a proto fascist.

Speaker 5 (38:05):
Maybe maybe it's cynical to say, Okay, they're looking at
their brand, they're looking at their public image. But I
don't think the lawsuit. You can't say Harvard is standing
up to Trump because they're thinking about their image. You know,
it's like a standard thing. You know, this is a
different kind of cynical. Right, They sued Trump because that
was like the best course of action, right, Like they're

(38:28):
in such a good position to win immediate gains from that,
and then to be fully resolved is going to take
years and years, and it's going to end up in
the Supreme Court in years, and those Supreme Court judges
are then going to have to decide whether this is
a conflict of interest because they were fucking educated at
Harvard too, and so are the lawyers and everybody was.

(38:50):
Harvard has its own law school, right they can they
can like do all this in house. But anyway, No,
it's not about public image and it's not about grand
beliefs valorizing education. It's just like this was the best
move right. They've attacked us and would take the cultural
the cultural temperature and say, Okay, now's the time to

(39:10):
move instead of capitulating, let's try this right. Because they
probably Columbia probably considered the same options and decided against
it because they thought they might not have been as
well positioned. Harvard obviously thinks it's well positioned, and all
it really wants to do. The purpose of this lawsuit
is just to stave off the attack. It's just if
they did nothing, that would be ridiculous. So they did

(39:32):
something because obviously the Trump administration is in a position
this time where they have less boundaries and less holding
them back from doing them we want to do compared
to the last time around. But they're still shit at
it and making humongous mistakes, and their messaging is completely
self contradictory.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
I e.

Speaker 5 (39:54):
Some people say it was the demands were sent by mistake.
How do you mistakenly send a that people signed assigned draft? Like,
who's ever heard of that accidentally sent to the person
that you were not supposed to send it to? Plus
like all the other leaks and crazy shit that's going on, I.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Think that's obviously just a lie that they sent it
by mistake, because because they pushed back.

Speaker 5 (40:18):
Sure, but it's a mixed message, that's all of it.
It's still a mixed message. Whether or not it's true,
it's a mixed message. It's out there. There's some people
saying this and some people saying that, and they appear
to be from the same team, saying opposite things or
sending mixed messages explaining the facts differently, Like the Beatles, right,
they always explain the same story completely different ways.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention what's actually like,
What's what's very sad about this? Because you might think, oh, yeah,
we're we're poor, we're never getting into Harvard. Good go
fuck you. But something else that happened last week was
Linda McMahon w WWE star Linda McMahon said that right

(41:04):
before they get Rufo gets his way and they dismantled
the Department of Education. She said, we're gonna uh refer
all student loans that are in default to debt collected
debt collection God, which is, I don't know, that's sane,
that effects I think like fifty million people was the
number I saw, which is, I don't know, that's just cruel.

Speaker 5 (41:28):
It's ending loan forgiveness was on the list of things
that they sent.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
You guys have more student debt than credit card debt.

Speaker 4 (41:37):
That's American, the Unadian.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
Sorry sorry, the US sorry, sorry, my bad. Soon.

Speaker 5 (41:42):
So, if you look at the weirder elements of Trump supporters,
you get the sense of where the myth comes from,
the myth makers around the Trump brand. And the best
I could come up with is like a succession myth,
you know, like Trump is like Zoo and Biden and
the old order is like Chronos or something, and he

(42:04):
wants to like castraight the old order to give to
give your a Lacinian way, and it's a it's he's
he's he's threatening. He's threatening the system with castration, is
what he's doing. The new gods are taken over and
they're and they're they're protectionist, anti interventionist libertarians.

Speaker 4 (42:27):
I was also I feel like I should say because
I said at the beginning of the episode, like one
of Trump's demands that I kind of liked, So I
feel like I should probably just like share that. I
don't know, Yeah, well, it's like ending DEI and hiring,
like I'm I'm for that. I think, like as someone
who's been on the job market, like right now, I think,

(42:48):
you know, like having to write a DEI statement, it's
just so stupid and redundant.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
You have to write a DEI statement.

Speaker 4 (42:56):
Often for many positions. You have to write like explaining
like how you'll contribute to diversity, equity and inclusion in
the university, And I.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Do you col yourself Latin X on applications.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
There's a box to check, Yes, I do. Of course,
I'm fucking gaming the system as best as I can.
But I'll say that like the reason why, like I
just find it objectionable and unredundant, because like, when I
write my teaching statement, I think like good pedagogy means
making students feel included, making everyone feel welcome, like they
have a part, like you cover that in your teaching statement.

(43:29):
So it's like, then you have to do this other thing.
And I do like, maybe this is going to sound hyperbolic,
but I do see it as like an ideological litmus test.
It's like are you up, Like, are you like fully
on board with intersectionality and all this stuff. That's basically
what it is. And I do think it's inappropriate and
I disagree with it. So that's my most anti woke
feeling about the university.

Speaker 5 (43:49):
I completely agree with you, and I think it's absolutely
fine to say, you know, I have criticisms of the
higher education system, very colish criticisms of it, and I'm
glad there's change coming. I just do not agree at
all with the purposes or the ways that these changes

(44:09):
are being brought about. And I don't and I simply
don't agree with all of the changes either. And some
of the changes I agree with that is something that
should be changed, but the way that they want to
change it and the way they're going about changing is
the complete fucking opposite, Like, don't centralize control of the
universities under the president and then centralize the control of

(44:33):
all the universities under the president of the United States, Right,
that is stupid. Get rid of the governors, get rid
of the boards of governors and the investors and all
the business fucks that make all the decisions, and bring
in collegial governance. Empower the Senates, empower the departments to
make their own decisions in autonomy. That's we're going in

(44:53):
the complete opposite direction of that. Just like DEI is
a ass covering MECHANI, right, it's a butt covering mechanism.
They can say, well, this guy was racist, but according
to our form, he's not a racist.

Speaker 4 (45:06):
Right.

Speaker 5 (45:06):
We gave him the personality test and everything, and he
came out not racist. So we're clear, right, we're not
on the hook for this great great Okay, send him
to jail, Send off. Where did Hyde go to university?

Speaker 4 (45:16):
Off?

Speaker 5 (45:16):
Who fucking cares? He signed a DEI thing when he
got in there.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
We checked and he's read and agreed to quit with
Kim Kimberly Cranch.

Speaker 5 (45:23):
Look, and it's another version of ideological vetting, like asking
that's the thing that's international students if they agree with
American values.

Speaker 4 (45:31):
That's just well exactly de That's that's what I find
so objectionable, is like it gives that. But like there's
a lot of I think academics who are in denial
about that, but I do think. And actually it's funny.
I was doing interview prep because I did an interview
for this job that I didn't end up getting, but
I uh, I did some interview prep with one of
my professors, and I found out that like in our department,

(45:53):
like when when we do interviews, like there's a question
literally on their preliminary interview that's what does diversity mean you?
Like what kind of a trap? Bullshit question? Is that?
Like that is like like that's literally just a trap.
That is an ideological trap.

Speaker 5 (46:08):
That's like to check your shock test.

Speaker 4 (46:10):
It's a ror shock test, and like it's like if
you hesitate, it's like then they can see, oh, you're
probably a conservative, and like we don't want you here,
Like if you hesitate for a second. And I just
find that to be totally.

Speaker 5 (46:19):
Eat your body language.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yeah, I bet you. They don't if you're applying for
a job at the law school. I doubt you'd have
to answer this question.

Speaker 5 (46:27):
Yeah, but you know these attacks, you know, when they've
created these associations, uh say, when the Trump administration wants
to do X or Y whatever they want to do.
So they create these associations, right like DEI whatever it is,
wherever it originated. You know, it's okay, DEI is going

(46:49):
to be mentioned in the same sentence as critical race theory,
which is going to be mentioned in the same sentence
as Marxist radicals, which is going to be mentioned in
the same sentences, foreign funding, all these things, right, So
they just try to create these completely arbitrary sets of associations, right,
Which is the fun thing so Sarah taught us about

(47:10):
language is there's a lot of arbitrarity in there, and
you can just try to create these mental associations and
that's just the hegemonic strategy.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
The funny thing my professor said, I was like, does
anyone ever answer that question? Well, like what is diversity?
And she admitted she was like not really, yeah, it's
like something So I'm like, why are you guys, Like
what are you doing? Like like I didn't say that professor.
But I was just like, but I was just like,
why are you doing this? Then? Like, what's the point
we'd like to see you suffer.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
This is the thing that drove Peterson insane exactly. But
if we're talking about like it, to consider I e
to consider like wokeness as a religion. This is the
kind of rituals that belong to it is you know,
like like there's it's not a law to put your

(47:59):
your pronouns in your email signature, but it would be
really good if you did.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
But if you want to belong you have to.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
Well it's a signal.

Speaker 5 (48:08):
It's a signal a killer.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
If you did. It's not a lot to give a
land acknowledgment, but you probably should. It's kind of belongs
to the HR section of the university, which is the
most it's more woke than the departments.

Speaker 4 (48:26):
You know, I recently learned because I saw this, Like
I was looking at a colleague's like website, they're on
the academic job market, and I noticed that they had
something which I had never seen before, which described themselves
as a settler scholar, and I kind of and and
I had that reaction. I kind of laughed. I was
like okay, like settler scholar, Like what kind of new

(48:48):
like woke thing is this. But then a colleague explained
to me that there's actually a legit good reason for
having it, especially because this person works on indigenous issues
in politics. So like the thing is like it's actually
plays a function where if you're working on indigenous issues,
it's a way of making clear I'm not indigenous basically

(49:09):
because there is, because there can be like a weird
thing and it's happened in the past where like white
people kind of like adopt and co opt and pretend
to be indigenous when they're like really into indigenous issues,
So like I can at least respect that. There's like
it's playing a function. It's not just like pronouns or
just like something that doesn't or like having a land
acknowledgment in your email where it's really just like virtue signaling.

(49:30):
It seems to play a role here. And also like
the person too who like did it, it's like they're
definitely white, but like they kind of have dark hair
and dark complexion, and it's like you might it's like
possible if you saw them, you'd be like, oh, maybe
maybe they're indigenous.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yeah, I wanted to read Trump's truth social and there's
it's laden with religion. This is his post. Perhaps Harvard,
this is after Harvard pushed back. Perhaps Harvard should lose
its taxes exempt status and be taxed as a political
entity if it keeps pushing political ideological and terrorist inspired sickness.

Speaker 4 (50:06):
Oh yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Just whatever, Harvard as a terrorist supporting institution.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
I think the religious myth here that they're trying to
enforce is that if you want to be an American,
you cannot be you have to be Proisrael.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
You know, it's exactly the same thing, but reversed as
what Hitler did when he says to all the universities,
you guys, we're going to do some We're going to
do some anti dejuification.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
Oh yeah, purity, something about purity.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
This is how Heideger became rector.

Speaker 4 (50:40):
Yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 5 (50:42):
Yeah, And that's you know, definitely, that's I think that's
the broader liberal principles that are under attack here are
the independence of these kinds of institutions, right, like obviously
the Federal Reserve. Independence is very import for the global market,
especially because the US dollars, like the global reserve currency,

(51:06):
so you don't want, you know, whatever administration comes in,
you don't want them to be able to just like
fire and hire whoever they want. Like some central banks
are very much under the control of whatever administration is
in power. And then it becomes very politicized and very
unstable because it changes, especially in democracies where things are

(51:29):
changing all the time. Right, same with the universities, right,
like you know, all those those aren't just empty phrases
about free speech and academic freedom and all those things, right,
they mean something within a liberal framework. They do, and
they're good things as far as they go sometimes, but

(51:50):
then they become politicized and we lose the essence of
the issue. Like we are a settler colonial nation. We
came here and did I mean, I don't mean to
say we, but like, you know, the European colonization should
be taught because it's history. But then it becomes you know,
this political football. We start looking at the antinomies of

(52:11):
free speech while his hate speech free speech. Then you
get into these fucking metaphysical antinomies around these subjects and
you go nowhere because they've been politicized and d substantialized right,
and de historicized, and then we just talk about what
they mean in the infinite system of signs that they're
supposedly getting their meaning from the structure of their position

(52:33):
and whatever. But it is insightful because you know, I
guess Barth, you know, in his mythology and other text
distinguishes between the denotation and the connotation. Right. The denotation
is just like the substantial thing that the word is
pointing to. But the connotation that's the big part, right,

(52:55):
because that's like the associative network that that word exists in.
And certain words, you know, you create associations through repetition
and then the connotation becomes that, right, So you know,
a connotation can shift from BLM being a Black Lives
Matter movement to BLM being an anti police criminal organization

(53:19):
if the ideologists of the Trump administration can get their way,
which interestingly, I had to mention this because it is
related to education, but it is not higher education. It's
primary education because some prayer you right, They've put out
these models for K to twelve and they have all

(53:42):
these educational videos which are pure narratives. They're amazing, they're
hilarious and oh my god, some of them are just
totally ridiculous. Like you know, you can get a sense
of what they want to convince you, even just by
like a summary of the narrative, Like it's actually interesting.

Speaker 4 (54:04):
It's interesting you mention that because I was yesterday, I
was listening. I went on my first bike ride of
the season because it's starting to get nice here in Toronto.
And the nerd that I am, I listened to Supreme
Court oral arguments. Uh when when I'm riding, and uh,
they just did this case. It's like mock mood versus something.
And it's about like people complaining that there that their
children in schools have to like read LGBT like propaganda

(54:27):
according to their like their perspective, and like most of
it was like bullshit. It was like, you know, like
some story about like Uncle Bob, like marrying a man,
and it's like okay, like relax, like that's a normal
thing that happens in life. But I will say, like
in passing, there were like a few things that they
mentioned that they had that they're that children were being
exposed to that I did find that I did feel like, sorry,

(54:50):
I did feel like the like like the like the
religious parents have my cat's me owing at me. Uh that,
like the religious parents kind of had a point like
was inappropriate. Like so, for example, there's one that was
like teaching like eight year olds and seven year olds
that they should be resisting heteronormativity at all times and
they should be resisting norms. And I'm like, that is
not appropriate. Yes, it's in the record that there's like

(55:10):
a storybook that like from like this this LGBT Alliance
about like you know, helping children like challenge like you
should be challenging and I'm like eight year olds to sorry,
seven year olds should not be challenging norms. They need
to be learning norms and fucking behaving themselves, okay something,
And then.

Speaker 5 (55:25):
The project sixteen something or there's something.

Speaker 4 (55:29):
And there was like and I think and I think
there was like one other thing about like about uh
oh fuck. I can't remember what the other one was,
but there were like two things that they mentioned at
least that I was like, dude, that's like pretty like
that like I'd be I might even be pissed if
like that they were teaching that to my kids. Like
of course stories about like Uncle Bob and like the
fact that gay people exist and can love each other

(55:49):
like of course, story conservatives like that's a real thing
that happens in the world, but like to try to
take I think the thing that I object to is
like to try to take like pretty controversial and contestable
academic concepts and try to cram them down the throats
of like of like six year olds and eight year olds.
Oh yeah, I remember what the other thing was. It
was like a story that involved a thing about how

(56:11):
like the doctor takes the child out and it just
decides arbitrarily that it's a woman or a boy. That
it's just like that that I forget what the termine
in like gender theory is, but it's like, you know,
when it comes out you like discursively, Like that really
all gender and sex are. It's discursive, And I'm like,
that's a complicated, controversial thing that six year olds and

(56:31):
seven year olds don't need to be like learning about.
Like that's a complicated thing, is it?

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Six year olds are reading Judith Butler.

Speaker 4 (56:39):
It's like a like like a child story book version
according to the oral arguments, I'd.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Have to I'd have to ask questions when he comes
out of mommy and the doctor discursively declares it's just.

Speaker 4 (56:50):
Yes, it's a declare. They just declare it, and it's
and it's actually flexible and that you can be whatever
you want. And they're just saying that and it's temporary,
and I'm like, that is fucked up.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
We have assuming it read doctors.

Speaker 5 (57:01):
Yeah, I wonder how many states added that to their
official curriculum versus prigger. You who has been in Oklahoma, Texas,
and Florida have all signed on. Right, the reach is
much higher, right, I mean, as an aside, this is

(57:21):
the worst part of polarization, right, is because each side
takes the most extreme and non representative examples of bad
behavior from each side and holds them up like and
it talks about them in the present tense, like this
is something that is done regularly. They're just pumping out
there's some factory out there pumping out books about gay

(57:42):
marriage just all the time. No, there's nothing that's like
an anomaly, but it's held up as you know, that's
why you're hearing all this shit about campus protests and
anti semitism. And you go there, you think it's like
a slaughterhouse. Then you go there and there's fucking crickets,
nothing is happening. It's business as usual. You can you
can take these you know, it's called the representational representative

(58:03):
bias whatever. Anyway, that's how connotation works. But you know this,
this Praeger you videos are amazing and these have been
like this material can be used in a classroom according
to the school boards of the states. I don't think
the individual places are really agreeing with them. But here's

(58:24):
one Los Angeles Matteo backs the Blue. Oh my god,
you can see where this is going. A young boy
whose family fled to Los Angeles to escape drug cartels
in Mexico. So he's crime on the rise due to
Black Lives Matter protests, which he compares to crime spurred
by cartels in Mexico. You know, there's that's part of

(58:44):
the narrative of this video that's aimed at K to
twelve children. Okay, So they're teaching them that anti police,
about anti police sentiment, teaching them be pro police, right
or the other one? Another one fossil fuels, right, someone
is about a kid who stands up for fossil fuel companies.
Another one about Western values compares the British colonization of

(59:07):
India and eliminating the cast system to the spread of
Western values, and like the British brought prosperity and success
to India as a result. No, no giant massacres or
anything like that happened. They got rid of the cast
system because that's the one that promotes Western values. They
even have one for us. Little Jimmy or whoever it was,
had to go to the States and use their superior

(59:29):
private healthcare system because our public healthcare system is so
gummed up. It doesn't work properly, right, Like it doesn't.
It doesn't bankrupt anybody who gets a fucking cold, so
it must not be working properly, is the message there?
I guess, not really green energy in Central Africa. You know,
we don't have the parts for these stupid plates. Bring
in the oil instead, right, like all these and this

(59:51):
is on K to twelve shit and that's got reach.
So I don't know about like Daddy's New Friend book,
how many curriculums that made its way onto But this shit,
this far right craziness, which all this is all perfectly neoliberal.
Diego said, where's the where's the capitalism? It's right fucking here,
fossil fuel right, anti green energy, is just a version

(01:00:13):
of capitalism that these people want. Anyway, Again, rant's over, but.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
It's but it's I mean, I agree with you. I mean,
like the reason I thought about my example was because
it's like a mirror image. They're just like a mirror
images of each other in a way.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Let's end on a fun note here I sent I've
sent you guys a list.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
What the hell is that?

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Okay, this is the banned word list.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
So what the band is?

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
It's uh, it's allegedly the White House or some people
in the White House.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
What the band word list has on it is if
you're if your grant application or any of your research
has any of these words in it, it's just automatically denied.
They probably just ask Chad GBT did you find any
of these words in the application? And then it's immediately rejected.
So what's on the band word list? There's there's some

(01:01:04):
good ones.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
There are some very good ones.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Gay inclusive, inclusive. You can't say inclusive.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
And you can't say all inclusive, so you cannot write
about hotels, resoarts.

Speaker 5 (01:01:15):
This has got to be bullshit. Elderly ethanol And.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Here's a good one. Here's a good one. Peanut allergies.

Speaker 5 (01:01:26):
This can't Yeah, yeah, there's no way this is really it's.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Illegal to be allergic to peanuts from now on. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Sex and really this was not exactly this list, but
another one was published by the New York Times, So
I think this is a reputable and it's it's only
banned by the way for like federal grant applications.

Speaker 5 (01:01:47):
It says they're being scrubbed from websites and documents of
the government.

Speaker 4 (01:01:50):
Did you see the other story about Nola gay, like
the one the first woman or something to fly a
plane like it got flagged at the Pentagon automatically because
it had the word gay.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
Gay science is also for beating from now on exactly, you.

Speaker 5 (01:02:06):
Can't say the word victim connotations, change.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Tribal to go with a you can't say tribal or native. Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
I mean, I feel like that might be a place
where the de I people will agree, uh with Trump
on that that we shouldn't be using the word tribal.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
You can't say systemic or stereotype. What You're not allowed
to use Latin X anymore. So Latin latinos LATINX.

Speaker 5 (01:02:31):
We all celebrate, We're done it seems a little bit.
Some of these words are very general, like.

Speaker 4 (01:02:37):
Bias, slow emission, vehicle A long.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Look, here's all the here's all the gender ones, gender,
gender based, gender based violence, gender diversity, gender identity, gender ideology,
gender affirming care or genders. Oh my god, female is banned?
Male is not only male dominated? Is female is banned malely?

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
Yeah, there's take that both for here.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Dude, if this were if this were applied like Jordan Peterson,
Ben Shapiro Prager, they would have nothing to talk about.
This is this is this is fifty percent of their material.

Speaker 5 (01:03:18):
That's like a this is like a word cloud from
Jordan Peterson or something. I don't know if this is
a band wordless at all.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
I think it was Marcus Aurelius that said that the
higher the degree of the decadence of an empire, the
weirder their rules become.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
And I think this is this is, this is where
we're going.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
You can't say the word definition.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
We should try one episode with at least in front
of us and try to have a normal conversation avoiding
those words so hard.

Speaker 5 (01:03:50):
Vowel a very limiting without this vocabulary. This is like,
this is, this is like Urban dictionary. This is like
what you need need to understand Reddit a list of terms.
I don't understand half of them.

Speaker 4 (01:04:05):
So weird.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Twitter will become like absolutely in a day.

Speaker 5 (01:04:09):
They put women and women like they, and then they
put female and females like they. They make sure you
put the plural on there. We don't want to leave
any loopholes like.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
People to abuse the system. Yet.

Speaker 5 (01:04:22):
Oh that's why we say, you know, racisms, We have
to say that. We have to publish a book about
racisms while this list is going.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
You are allowed to say male, but you're not allowed
to say men. Men is banned.

Speaker 5 (01:04:34):
I see men, they're men or men right above mental
health and men. Oh, men who have sex with men?
That's what you're not allowed to say, the whole phrase.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Oh sorry, okay, I made a mistake. It wasn't men,
it was men who have sex with men. There's a
line break there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Can you say men that make love to other men?
That's that's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
Well you can't. I guess you are allowed to say men,
but you cannot say I.

Speaker 5 (01:04:57):
Think this list is exhaustive.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
So yeah, women is banned, and women away awesome, and
feminism is banned too.

Speaker 5 (01:05:05):
So put it on the signature of all your documents,
like just like, best regards, diego ps men who have
love making with you?

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Are we still allowed to be an orientalist podcast?

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
Or is that banned as well?

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Orientalism is allowed. It looks like, so we have survived
another week, Yes we have.

Speaker 5 (01:05:26):
Well, yeah, like Marxism is allowed on this list too, apparently,
but that's it. I think they didn't think that one
would be a problem.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
This is again.

Speaker 5 (01:05:33):
This is like, this is an ideological unity list, right,
this is an imposition. This is exactly what like one
of the fronts of the ideological battle here, one of
the I think one of the actual goals of Trump
is yeah, this ideological conformity with his vision of the future.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
All right, well there's a.

Speaker 5 (01:05:56):
Perfect example of that too.

Speaker 4 (01:05:57):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
We can't say we can't say he him, but you
cannot say they that.

Speaker 5 (01:06:03):
The language police works for both sides.

Speaker 4 (01:06:06):
The language police works in miss it works in mysterious ways.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
I love you, my fellow.

Speaker 5 (01:06:11):
Men, double language agents.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
All right, all right, see you men who have sex
with men?

Speaker 5 (01:06:20):
All right, Later